Scott Neuman

Scott Neuman works as a Digital News writer and editor, handling breaking news and feature stories for NPR.org. Occasionally he can be heard on-air reporting on stories for Newscasts and has done several radio features since he joined NPR in April 2007, as an editor on the Continuous News Desk.

Neuman brings to NPR years of experience as an editor and reporter at a variety of news organizations and based all over the world. For three years in Bangkok, Thailand, he served as an Associated Press Asia-Pacific desk editor. From 2000-2004, Neuman worked as a Hong Kong-based Asia editor and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He spent the previous two years as the international desk editor at the AP, while living in New York.

As the United Press International's New Delhi-based correspondent and bureau chief, Neuman covered South Asia from 1995-1997. He worked for two years before that as a freelance radio reporter in India, filing stories for NPR, PRI and the Canadian Broadcasting System. In 1991, Neuman was a reporter at NPR Member station WILL in Champaign-Urbana, IL. He started his career working for two years as the operations director and classical music host at NPR member station WNIU/WNIJ in DeKalb/Rockford, IL.

Reporting from Pakistan immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Neuman was part of the team that earned the Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Wall Street Journal for overall coverage of 9/11 and the aftermath. Neuman shared in several awards won by AP for coverage of the December 2004 Asian tsunami.

A graduate from Purdue University, Neuman earned a Bachelor's degree in communications and electronic journalism.

4:41 pm

Sun March 1, 2015

Secretary of State John Kerry, apparently hoping to patch a rift sparked by GOP lawmakers' decision to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress without first consulting the White House, says the administration doesn't want the speech to become a political football.

The Two-Way

3:05 pm

Sun March 1, 2015

Survivors of an avalanche walk in the Abdullah Khil village of the Dara district of Panjshir province on Sunday. Nearly 200 people have been killed in north Afghanistan in some of the worst avalanches there for 30 years.

Massive avalanches in a valley not far from the Afghan capital have reportedly killed nearly 200 people, adding to a total of almost 250 deaths from the worst such snow slides in three decades in the country's mountainous northeast.

Rescue workers using bulldozers worked to clear roads to the Panjshir Valley area just northeast of Kabul — an area where villagers have been cut off for almost a week.

Nearly two-thirds of Millennials who identify as Republican support legalizing marijuana, while almost half of older GOP Gen-Xers do, according to a recently released Pew survey that could be an indicator of where the debate is heading.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced a reduction in U.S. diplomatic staff in the country and restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens there –- as he accused Washington of "gringo" meddling.

Tens of thousands of people are gathering in the Russian capital to mourn Boris Nemtsov, the former deputy prime minister turned harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin who was gunned down on a Moscow street last week.

The march, originally scheduled to oppose Russian involvement in Ukraine, was to have been led by Nemtsov himself. Following his murder, however, the gathering has turned into a wake for the fallen opposition leader.

Days after video emerged showing self-declared Islamic State extremists taking sledge hammers to pre-Islamic antiquities inside the Mosul museum, the Iraqi government has reopened the country's national museum, shuttered since the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Nemtsov, 55, a deputy prime minister in the 1990s who later organized mass rallies against Putin in 2011 and 2012. Most recently, he accused Putin allies of profiteering from the development of the Sochi Winter Olympics infrastructure.

As we reported late Friday, the House managed to approve a one-week extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which President Obama signed. The passage capped a day of scrambling that saw a longer three-week stopgap shot down in the House.

A bomb blast at a rally in eastern Ukraine has killed two people on the first anniversary of the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, an event that helped trigger Russia's annexation of Crimea and a separatist uprising.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry described the blast at a pro-Kiev rally in Kharkiv as an act of terrorism and said it had been caused by a bomb. It said a police officer was among the dead and that about a dozen other people were wounded.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson says he's taking seriously a call by Islamist extremists for attacks on shopping malls in the West, including Minnesota's giant Mall of America.

In an interview on CNN's State of the Union program, Johnson said a video released by the Somali-based group al-Shabab "reflects [a] new phase" in which terrorist networks publicly call "for independent actors in their homelands to carry out attacks.

The bodies of at least 68 passengers have been recovered from the site of a capsized river ferry in Bangladesh, The Associated Press reports.

Up to 140 people are believed to have been on the ferry; however, officials have not determined the number of missing passengers. The AP reports that ferries in the region normally don't maintain precise lists of their passengers.

A Chilean man who began an around-the-world bicycle journey four years ago and was closing in on a Guinness distance record has been killed.

Juan Francisco Guillermo was hit by a passing pickup truck while stopped on the side of a highway in rural Thailand. His Singaporean wife and 2-year-old son, who were traveling with him, sustained minor injuries.

The Two-Way

8:30 am

Sun February 22, 2015

Turkish soldiers during the military operation in Syria on Sunday. Turkey launched the raid to evacuate some 40 soldiers guarding the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish army launched an overnight operation to rescue some 40 of its soldiers guarding an Ottoman-era tomb in Syria. The soldiers had come under attack by self-declared Islamic State.

The remains of the Tomb of Suleyman Shah were taken back across the border.

NPR's Peter Kenyon, reporting from Geneva, says that throughout the conflict in Syria, Turkey has kept soldiers at the tomb near Aleppo. Suleyman Shah was the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled vast parts of Europe, Asia and Africa for six centuries. Shah is revered by Turks.

The Two-Way

4:55 pm

Sat February 21, 2015

British Prime Minister David Cameron is urging his nation's schools to guard against the influence of extremism after three school-aged girls slipped out of the country in a suspected attempt to join the self-declared Islamic State.

The Associated Press reports that Cameron said the teenagers' disappearance was deeply concerning.

"We all have a role to play in stopping people from having their minds poisoned by this appalling death cult," Cameron said.

The Two-Way

12:05 pm

Sat February 21, 2015

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and Secretary of State John Kerry deliver a statement at a news conference in London, today. Kerry said the two were going to discuss the possibility of further sanctions against Russia amid cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine.

Secretary of State John Kerry is signaling the possibility of more sanctions on Russia over continued fighting in eastern Ukraine, saying the U.S. and its allies would not tolerate Moscow's "brazen" violations of the Minsk cease-fire agreement.